Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| full-time workers | Persons whose primary occupation is in Christian or church work. |
| fully-evangelized | Used of an area or population in which the gospel has become universally known. |
| functional literacy | A higher level of competence than basic ability to read and write, qualifying a person to meet many of the practical needs of daily life in his culture or group |
| Fundamentalism | A militantly conservative movement in North American Protestantism originating around 1910 in opposition to modernist tendencies and emphasizing as fundamental to Christianity a group of 5 or 7 basic doctrines: inerrant verbal inspiration of the Bible, Virgin Birth, miracles of Christ, Resurrection, total depravity of man, substitutionary atonement, premillennial Second Coming. |
| fundamentalism, structural | A very conservative attitude to existing church structure regarded as of divine origin, or unchangeable, or otherwise sacrosanct. |
| fundamentalist | An adherent or proponent of Protestant Fundamentalism, often narrowed to premillennialism or dispensationalism. |
| Fundamentalists | Evangelicals (usually premillennialists or dispensationalists) holding the doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible, opposing modernism, liberalism and ecumenism, and stressing the 5 or 7 basic doctrines; all persons affiliated to denominations holding Fundamentalist doctrines; in the USA, estimated at 50 million persons: of whom 40% (20 million) are premillennialists. |
| fund-raising | Over 1,000 organizations are devoted to direct raising of funds for Christian use. In many countries there are Christian para-church organizations, or branches of denominations, which specialize in fund-raising activities on behalf of local churches or development projects. |
| furlough | A leave of absence granted to a foreign missionary to return to his home country for a time for leave. |
| fusion | The union, merging, blending of 2 or more denominations into one church. |
| future | The time or period or era that is still to come. |
| future research | Futurology (qv). |
| future studies | Research studies on the probable future development of a situation, involving the producing of alternative futures (qv) or possible scenarios. |
| futures | Futurists usually speak of possible futures in the plural when discussing the future of a particular entity or concept, posing a range of 2 or 3 scenarios of the future instead of a more risky single future prediction. |
| futurescan | A wide-ranging glance or survey of possible or alternate future scenarios, from the Christian standpoint. |
| futurist | Relating to futurology (qv). |
| futuristics | Futurology (qv). |
| futuristics (or, futurology) | The professional study of the future employing a wide range of analytical tools and scientific procedures. |
| futurology | The science of the systematic study of the future. |
| futurology of Christianity | Literature discussing possible futures of Christianity and the churches has been extensive for the last 100 years. |
| gallicanism | The movement, or body of doctrine, which asserted the complete freedom of the Catholic Church (especially in France) from the ecclesiastical authority of the papacy. Vatican I (1870) signified the end of the movement within the Roman Church, but it survives in Old Catholic and other autocephalous Catholic churches. |
| gathered church | A denomination brought into being through the influx of individuals, families or small groups often through the mission station approach, rather than by means of a people movement (qv). |
| Ge’ez | Ethiopic, an extinct Semitic language still used as the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. |
| Gelukpa | Yellow Hat (Reformed) Lamaism (qv). |
| general | The chief of a religious order or all houses or congregations under one religious rule; superior general of the Jesuit order; supreme commander of the Salvation Army. |
Data on 18 categories of religion, including non-religious, by country, province, and people.
Data on all religions, Christian activities, and trends.
Membership data, year begun, and rates of change.
Population and religion data on all major cities & provinces.
Detailed information covering religion, culture, and geography.
A repository of historical data, including a chronology of Christianity from the 1st to 21st centuries.